Home
by StillWaters1
Summary: When Aziraphale feels at home, he stretches his neck and shoulders by rolling his head. But always to the left. Because that's where Crowley is.


**Title:** Home

**Author:** Still Waters

**Fandom:** Good Omens

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Good Omens. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

**Summary: **When Aziraphale feels at home, he stretches his neck and shoulders by rolling his head. But always to the left. Because that's where Crowley is.

**Written:** 7/7/19

**Notes:** This is my first journey into writing "Good Omens." I loved the history behind Aziraphale and Crowley's friendship in the miniseries. While watching the last episode, "The Very Last Day of the Rest of our Lives," I noticed an interesting parallel between two scenes. When Crowley stops time so that he and Aziraphale can talk to Adam before Satan arrives, Aziraphale's first response to the new environment is to close his eyes and roll his head to the left as if stretching his neck and shoulders. During the later scene where Crowley-as-Aziraphale steps into the hellfire in Heaven, he does the same thing, closing his eyes and rolling his head to the left first, but then also to the right. Crowley is almost always on Aziraphale's left side in the series. From what I've heard about the creation of this series, there is probably already a whole story behind these choices, but I enjoyed taking those little things and creating this exploration into their history. Dialogue quoted from the episode does not belong to me. I hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading as I explore this world.

* * *

Time stops.

They're back at the beginning, to the endless sands on the other side of the garden wall, to a sky that had yet to know a cloud. Clothed in the form and fabric of his love for the Earth, the flaming gift that had been part of the start of it all in his right hand, wings manifest, Aziraphale couldn't remember the last time he had felt so positively_ right_. A light breeze ruffled his collar and slipped between the feathers of his wings. He closed his eyes and released a soft "ahh," a low, savoring sound of pleasure. No, more than pleasure - the sound of being _home_. The air around his feathers shifted as Crowley's wings moved just beyond him. Aziraphale stretched his neck and shoulders, rolling his head to the left, toward that familiar presence. He rarely felt this deeply grounded, but when he did, the human act of a good neck and shoulder stretch came unbidden. But he only rolled his head to the left.

Because that's where Crowley is. Where Crowley had always been.

That was _home_.

From that first meeting on the garden walls where an angel-possibly-doing-something-bad and a demon-possibly-doing-something-good had unknowingly started an _ineffable_ relationship now six thousand years strong, Crowley was the left side of Aziraphale's world. From Great Floods to Shakespearean theaters to park benches over the years, Crowley sprawled, sauntered, circled from, and fully occupied Aziraphale's left.

And here they were again, at the beginning - so close to a_ new_ beginning - wings unfurled, looking over the expansive potential of the world with the issue of humanity's future quite literally in front of them. Aziraphale smiled at the millennia-old presence at his left, a presence that was less_ felt_ than it was simply _part_ of him now. He let his head linger to the left, then brought it back to midline and opened his eyes.

_As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end._

Hopefully.

* * *

Crowley, clothed in Aziraphale's form, stepped into the flames.

As much as he didn't understand the angel sometimes, he really _did_. He knew Aziraphale better than these so-called angelic bureaucrats ever had; knew him as if he had created him. Which, in some ways, he sort of did. Crowley and Aziraphale had molded a lot of each other by this point in time.

Crowley knew, on some level, that he was being too still. Aziraphale was effusive in everything, but it was all Crowley could do to keep his rage tempered under the stillness of the snake waiting to strike; all cold eyes and tight-lipped smiles. But once he was in the flames, he did something completely and intimately _Aziraphale_; something he only did because he knew that it would remain private. There was no chance of the archangels recognizing it for what it was. They still thought Aziraphale considered Heaven his only home.

Idiots.

Crowley closed his eyes, stretched his neck and shoulders, and let out a pleased hum of relaxation. He basked in the hellfire, soaking up the warmth like the reptile that had helped start it all.

Crowley always noticed what Aziraphale did. He may not outwardly acknowledge that he did, but Aziraphale had been the world to his right side since the beginning. So, it hadn't escaped him that when Aziraphale did that human relaxation thing, when he felt truly at home, he rolled his head toward Crowley's presence. And he'd be blessed if he told anyone what that felt like, that wordless act of devotion from a bibliophile angel who was worse with the words for what they were to each other than a demon that didn't read. So, Crowley emulated Aziraphale's sense of home, rolling his head to the left, but then acknowledging his _own_ sense of home by rolling his head toward the right, to where Aziraphale always was.

Maybe the action grounded him, giving him the courage to improvise a bit more. Or maybe Crowley just wanted to fuck with the bastards who would kill his best friend like this. Crowley cracked his neck within the flames, inwardly sick at the crunching sound that Aziraphale's wings would have made as he was destroyed. The sound he'd love to hear as he broke the archangels in front of him, the ones who were now staring at the pillar of hellfire and the unbroken form within it with a combination of disgust, uncertainty, and fear. Ah, yes, fear. _That_, he could work with. He'd like to see a bit more of _that_. Letting the flames color Aziraphale's irises a reptilian gold, Crowley roared a burst of flame at the angels, reveling in their startled jump back.

"It may be worse than we thought," Michael said.

_Oh, you have no idea_, Crowley thought. Yeah, an angel such as Aziraphale relaxing in hellfire like it was a pleasant bath was terrifying to the host of Heaven. But not nearly as terrifying as what they were _really_ dealing with. For if it had truly been Aziraphale in the flames, they wouldn't have had to worry about restarting their war.

Crowley would have ended them all.

* * *

The world went on. Perhaps not without end, but at least without ending today. Crowley and Aziraphale sat on a park bench, each wearing their own faces, Crowley to Aziraphale's left, Aziraphale to Crowley's right, just as it should be. Just as it had always been. And, thanks to a bit of prophecy-initiated, supernaturally-obtained, and human-inspired insurance against fire and water damage, just as it always would be.

For no act of God was going to destroy their respective homes.


End file.
